One of our clients was concerned about the sales cycle time of their business. From the time a lead was delivered to Sales and when the actual sale closed was becoming longer and less successful.

By first defining all of the steps a lead had to take before reaching sales, and identifying ways to improve the timing, we could reduce the sales cycle and increase conversions.

Using workflow rules in Salesforce is a key component to tracking steps in the sales process. Once a lead has been contacted and qualified by sales, a Contact, Opportunity, and Account are created in Salesforce. By creating a field to track the date and time of each step, our client could see where delays were taking place. Marketing cycles were also tracked, based on when a lead status was changed from a marketing lead to a sales lead.

By creating reporting for our client to track the timing of a lead to move through each step, an average time could then be determined. All leads will now be measured against the average time, and can be utilized for quarterly and annual planning. Custom fields were also created in Salesforce to calculate the cycle times automatically.

Using marketing tactics (targeted email, etc) to increase prospective customer engagement and testing different messaging during early steps in the sales cycle can help to reduce cycle time or skip certain steps in the process to increase conversion.

Our client now has an understanding of the steps needed for each lead in the sales cycle, the automated reporting of date/time when a status changes on a lead, and increased conversions by reduced sales cycles.